


fire marengo

by jesimiel



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: (and ants), Arson, Canon-Typical Worms (The Magnus Archives), Cult of the Lightless Flame (The Magnus Archives), M/M, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, Smoking, m rating is bc i got as close as i could to writing a sex scene without writing a sex scene, once again the gdov tag is bc someone gets lit on fire, the homosexuality inherent in becoming an avatar, ughhhh im obsessed with this guy + the desolation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-14
Updated: 2020-08-14
Packaged: 2021-03-06 06:35:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,140
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25899064
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jesimiel/pseuds/jesimiel
Summary: “and i smell like—what, exactly?” it’s all he can think to say, and he’s honestly curious. jude takes a large, facetious sniff and then taps her chin in mock thought, scrutinizing him for a moment, before gaily replying, “nitroglycerin!”she sniffs again, squinting in disgust. “and… raid.”everything in jordan kennedy's life from the time he was twelve and a half years old has led to one singular vanishing point. his realization of this fact, however, is not nearly so neat.
Relationships: John Amherst/Jordan Kennedy
Comments: 10
Kudos: 33





	fire marengo

**Author's Note:**

> traded my "get attached to one statement giver free" card for the ability to write ten thousand words about the pest control guy. the idea of him hooking up with john started as a one-off meme and then i realized that it was actually really funny and decided to see if i could write it in a serious way. i'm attached to the idea of him being marked by the desolation his whole statement smacks of it. i'm also obsessed with the whole process of becoming an avatar and how it affects different people. i feel like i accidentally made this really horny? like, metaphorically? but i also think that's just kind of how the desolation is. anyway. i love the funny exterminator man feel free to come bother me on tumblr about it [here](http://jordankennedy.tumblr.com)

jordan kennedy decided that he wanted to be an exterminator on a sunny morning in the summer of 1993.

he’d had a friend over, the night before—his mother had allowed him to have a _girl_ over, for the very first time! and they’d sat on the balcony jutting off of the large window in his bedroom for a very long time, making the sort of jokes that twelve year olds do, until the wind grew chilly and the daytime sky had long since flipped over into night, and they’d returned inside to sleep.

they’d been drinking something, while they talked—some sort of soda without a stitch of caffeine, as per his mother’s ruling—and while his friend had brought her empty can inside, jordan had left his, only half-empty, on the balcony, so, naturally, his mother had seen the bright green can on the balcony from the driveway as she had left for work the next morning, and yelled up the side of the building for him to clean up. _it’s littering, jordan, it’s terrible for the environment._

he remembers what happened when he did as she asked almost more vividly than he remembers the attic of jane prentiss’s flat.

he’d picked up the can, shook it a bit, realized there was still about half of it left. _it’s definitely flat by now, but this is the last can. be a shame to waste it._ he lifted it to his mouth and took a drink.

he _thinks_ he screamed—it’d have been the most _normal_ reaction to have—but he doesn’t _remember_ screaming. he also doesn’t think he vomited, even though he sort of expected to. he just remembers—the _feeling_ of it. the sensation of his mouth being suddenly full of tiny, crawling things, with twitching legs and clenching mandibles, the sensation of being able to feel every one of their little scuttling bodies against the back of his throat, the sensation of dozens of them pouring out and over his face, his collar, his shoulders.

the one thing he never truly figured out, in the end, was just how quite so _many_ hundreds of ants had made their way up two floors on a brick wall, over the railing of the balcony, and into the tiny lip of a half-empty can of soda.

after that, he decides, he’s going to kill bugs for a living.

* * *

they _follow_ him, though. the insects. at least, he _thinks_ they do—they seem to get everywhere they shouldn’t be able to, or shouldn’t want to, for the express purpose of making him squirm. it’s really the strangest thing. 

it isn’t just the ants, either—though they are what he sees most often, he’s still suspiciously overly-prone to finding stinkbugs in his bedsheets and caterpillars in his clothes and little mites skittering over his bare feet in the dark. he always jumps, and he always gets the feeling that they’re… in cahoots with each other, somehow. or like they’re all _laughing_ at him, in their little bug way. laughing at his stricken face, his crawling terror.

he isn’t sure when he turned to fire as a way to destroy them, but he thinks it was when he was about fifteen—about the time he realized that he was genuinely being _targeted_ by something, something that took the form of all the decay and the filth and the goddamn _bugs._ was it after the mushrooms that grow under the trees in front of his school tried to follow him home, popping up unbidden out of the grass and out of cracks in the sidewalk after him as he walked? was it after his parents made him clean out the refrigerator and something that’d been festering in there for far too long started trying to eat him back? was it after he woke up one night choking, scrabbling at his throat, only to lean over his bathroom sink and cough up something _wriggling?_

he doesn’t know, but he knows that all it is is petty revenge, and it scares him. to think that the must-be-great disgusting power of this... _thing_ is stalking him for—for what? for things he’s done since he was a little kid? for things all little kids do, all the houseflies he’s sprayed with glass cleaner? all the cockroaches he’s cooked alive with kitchen blowtorches? all the centipedes he’s pulled the legs off of, one by one? is he _special,_ somehow, as though no one else swatted mosquitoes or stomped on beetles? 

(he thinks, maybe, that he is special because he is afraid. he's right, but he doesn’t know that until much later.)

it’s only when he turns the tables on a disturbingly large swarm of moths with a can of hairspray and a stolen lighter that he realizes that he can actually fight back. 

(he starts smoking, right around then—so that he always has something smoldering, just in case. he burns all the ants he sees with a magnifying glass.)

* * *

when he thinks about the summer of 2011, he never remembers what the man in the brown suit looks like.

well, no, that’s not quite true. objectively, clinically, _abstractly_ he knows. he remembers the dark hair, the straight nose, the sharp jaw, the blue eyes. but the exact _shape_ of the face, the exact _shade_ of blue—it’s muddled. foggy. indistinct. as though he remembers every detail of the man’s face separately, but somehow can’t seem to assemble every piece.

(not at all like the face of jane prentiss, which he remembers in great detail. he recalls her to have been bizarrely good-looking—a curtain of long, curly oil-dark hair that, when untangled and clean, might have once been very striking. a pair of wide, thick-lashed, oval-shaped eyes, distended irises a warm brown like deep-cut topaz, that might have once been luminous and twinkling. a faint spray of freckles dotted lightly across the bridge of her nose, and in between the pockmarked holes carved into her round cheeks. _a tragic sort of beauty in herself,_ he knows he thought, before squashing the idea as soon as he realized how pretentious it sounded. 

he remembers...how he felt. the slow rivers of deep, unexplainable sadness that flowed through his chest upon the delivery of her body for disposal—she was _tiny_ , barely five feet tall and so thin that he knows he wondered, in that second, how she didn’t simply blow away in a stiff breeze. he knows he reached out, as if in a trance, to push a lock of hair out of her eyes and back behind her ear. he knows he stood there, studying the strange expression of acceptance gracing her now-gentle face. he knows he stared at her, transfixed, for a very long time before opening the incinerator door.)

he wouldn’t say he _lied,_ really, to the magnus institute’s head archivist—nothing he had said was actually _untrue_ , and in any case, confirmation that yes, that mason jar half-full of snitched ashes _was,_ in fact, the remains of jane prentiss seemed to calm the man’s nerves enough that jordan could have probably made up anything he wanted and jonathan sims would have sat and listened.

no, no, he didn’t lie. he did, however, cut some events out of the first half of his two-point tale, stitching the gap back up with a thread of plausible deniability as inconspicuously as possible—which, it seemed, was inconspicuous enough. because he’d definitely left the house full of ants, he definitely drove away from the place in his blue van, he just sort of—skirted around the bit where he’d gone _back_.

because, see, he’d driven _off,_ sure, but it only took about fifteen minutes of frantic, slightly over-the-limit speeding for the reality of what he’d just done to really set in. the massive head-spinning rush of _oh my god, i lit somebody on fire_ was almost enough to run him off the road, and he’d pulled over into a convenience store car lot to catch his breath right before he’d reached the highway.

he’d made the decision to go back and make sure the man in the brown suit was alive almost as soon as his foot hit the brake pedal. he’d had no reason, of course, at the time, to assume that the man was anything other than human, and he supposed if he _must_ be clocked for second degree manslaughter, he might as well go down having at least _attempted_ to help. he’d honestly about passed out from the shock of it when he got back to the ant-filled house to see the man in the brown suit sitting on the porch step with his arms crossed, frowning deeply and tapping his foot impatiently, looking as though he’d never had so much as a sunburn before in his life. 

“back for more, are you?” he’d called sullenly across the driveway, as jordan, against all discretion, got out of his van. “more fire and brimstone? should have known, really, you _reek_ of it.” ah, there had been the only real change—his accent. irish, already thick to begin with and a good deal thicker during their second conversation than during their cut-off argument beforehand. it’d suited him.

“of _what?_ ” jordan’d said, a bit sharply, honestly more taken aback by the perceived insult than the sight of the man in his very un-charred state.

the man had rolled his eyes. “not _really_ your business, at this point, isn’t it? i mean, if you don’t already know, i shouldn’t tell you. make it too easy.”

“i don’t get it.” 

“hmm, well,” the man had said, in that airy sort of way people often put on when they’re about to say something very strange, getting up from the porch step and cracking his knuckles in what, in jordan’s opinion, was an extraordinarily and unnecessarily loud fashion. “i’m not the one to give you answers there, anyhow. hits a little too close, ‘specially now. you’re a real inconvenience.”

“thanks,” jordan had muttered flatly, the oddness of the day’s events mostly bouncing off of him. he wasn’t even scared, really, at least not anymore—just confused.

he’d blinked, then—a sort of pausing, maybe, a way for him to collect himself in the face of this extremely strange situation—or perhaps it was a bit longer than a blink, because when his eyes opened the man in the brown suit was quite a bit closer than before, only a few feet in front of him, and was holding out his hand in what he somehow managed to convey as a _bored_ manner. jordan had looked at the man for a moment, then the man’s hand, and decided, _what the hell,_ reaching out to shake it—though his decision was slightly bolstered by the fact that he did still happen to be wearing gloves.

“what’s your name?” the man had asked, a bit suddenly, his gaze sharpening from boredom into interest very quickly. jordan had answered, surreptitiously taking in the man’s impressive height for the second time, and the man had nodded once, curtly, before replying, “john.”

(he had vaguely thought that it was a bit unfair that john hadn’t volunteered his last name, especially considering jordan’s was plastered on the side of his van, but he hadn’t said any of that.)

“well, john, can i, uh,” jordan had said instead, distracted by the still-present feverish warmth of john’s hand as well as the way his eyes suddenly seemed to be boring holes in jordan’s face like voracious termites, “i dunno, buy you a drink or something? feel like i should, y’know—at least _try_ to make it up to you.”

“i’m not _exactly_ worse for wear,” said john, without dropping jordan’s hand. jordan had wiggled his fingers experimentally—john’s touch wasn’t uncomfortable, really, just so warm that it was starting to make his palms sweat beneath the gloves—but neither of them had let go.

“that a no?” 

john had taken another step, then, a little closer, still without withdrawing his hand from jordan’s, his gaze roving over jordan’s face and stopping, very briefly, on his mouth, before returning to look him in the eyes.

“no, it’s not,” john had said.

jordan’s memory gets a little fuzzy here. generally he assumes they _did_ go somewhere, ostensibly together, but he can never remember exactly where. he knows he drove, not wanting to risk john’s rusty car, and he recalls how warily john had eyed the words _kennedy pest control_ along the side of his van, but he remembers a sense of—understanding, maybe? or was it trust? either way, he was fairly sure john wasn’t going to hurt him, and he had no intention of hurting _john,_ so they obviously seemed to have come to _some_ sort of agreement. he thinks they might have gone to this bar he sometimes visits, on knightrider street, but he couldn’t say for sure—in any case, the place they’d gone to was mostly empty, aside from a staff member or two and a trio of girls with dyed hair babbling in dutch in a booth by the far wall, and he’d figured they wouldn’t be out of place there.

he knows that _he_ drank a bit, of course, and he remembers keeping his word and buying john a short glass of a lime green vodka-scented _something_ that he isn’t sure actually got consumed. he has a very vivid picture of john distractedly tapping a finger on an empty glass and leaving behind far more grease than he probably should have, and he also has a very vivid picture of not finding it immediately off-putting—even thinking it was a bit funny, in an odd sort of way, as it was clearly _meant_ to be off-putting, what with the way the man just seemed to radiate an aura of vague, undefinable unpleasantness, like something only mildly disgusting—and he supposes the fact that he didn’t actually _mind_ should have been a red flag to begin with.

he’d… said some things, that he knows for sure, things he can’t recall but he knows made john’s thin face crack into a crooked grin. he wasn’t _that_ drunk, though, to lose his memory of everything, he just apparently didn’t think what he said was actually worth _remembering_ , at least not in the moment. he does know that he’d been, for some reason, _egregiously_ flirting—speaking through a smile and taking off his baseball cap to twist a strand of his curly hair around his finger like a schoolgirl, which was decidedly _unlike_ him—and it had sort of been because of the alcohol, but had also sort of been because john had actually been _reciprocating_ , as far as jordan could tell, staring at his mouth and edging nearer along the bar so that their elbows touched. he was interested, and honestly, john wasn’t the oddest drinking partner he’d ever had. (he did, incidentally, get a last name from john at the bar, but he can’t for the life of him remember what it was.) 

he remembers smoking a cigarette, but he doesn’t remember taking out a lighter. he remembers john staring at him for a long time, his hands tightening almost imperceptibly where they rested on the wooden surface of the bar, the smoldering tip of the cigarette reflecting in his narrowed eyes. 

the next stretch of time is fairly clear—the drive (john’s drive, that is, for he’d drunk less, though neither of them were likely actually in any shape for it) to a large square building that he recognizes as his own (had he given john an address?). he doesn’t remember what was playing on the radio, but he knows it was slow, and he can picture john idly tapping his fingers on the steering wheel to the beat. he remembers almost laughing out loud at the thought of having to disinfect the driver’s seat later. 

he remembers arriving at his flat and unlocking the door (it took two tries, and he knows john had laughed at him, only a little bit meanly), and he remembers trading meaningless jabs with john as he went inside, and of course he remembers reaching out to take john’s wrist (he was so thin that it was almost disturbing—jordan could make his thumb and forefinger touch) and pull him in after him. john had been surprised, he thinks (surprised at the presumption or surprised that jordan would, _could_ touch him at all, he’s never sure), and skeptical, but had followed. he recalled john as looking… not exactly _uncomfortable,_ but rather slightly out of place, as though he had vitally important things he should have been doing instead, but couldn’t quite remember exactly what or where they were. not lost, just distracted. jordan had been strangely proud of himself for being a distraction. 

jordan hadn’t really expected it to _go_ anywhere. he wouldn’t have expected it to go anywhere if it were _anyone,_ let alone the person who’d probably tried to kill him and who he’d probably tried to kill in return less than twelve hours ago, but honestly? he’d had a long day, and he’d felt bizarrely good—he wasn’t drunk, anymore, really, but he was still just as warm and happy as he had been when he was—and so was in no hurry to shake off that feeling, and in any case, john was kind of attractive, in an average, mildly dirty sort of way. 

___jordan had liked his eyes; very blue, very luminous—bright and shiny, like you get when you have a particularly awful fever, the kind that give you strange dreams, but with none of the bleary glassiness. john’s eyes were very sharp._ _ _

___he’d walked over to the sink and filled a glass with water from the tap, and then did the same with another. he’d sat down on the sofa, carrying both glasses, and john had followed suit, at first scrunching up his long legs between the sofa and table comically and then seemingly thinking better of it, stretching them out in front of him and beneath the table instead. jordan had handed one of the glasses to john, who’d simply looked at it in what had appeared to be mild confusion for a long moment before dipping a finger into the water, like he was testing how hot it was. as though he hadn’t trusted jordan not to give him something boiling._ _ _

the water had quickly grown steadily darker and muddier, a mass of dirty brown-gray precipitate clouding the liquid from john’s fingertip outward until the glass was full not with tap water, but with a moldy, vile-smelling sludge. jordan had just stared flatly from the other end of the sofa, muttering an utterly unfazed _you can keep the cup_ as john grimaced in apology and set the glass aside. 

___john had kept his shoes on when he’d entered jordan’s flat, a wildly scuffed pair of vintage-looking black oxfords with mud caked on the brass aglets at the ends of the laces, and jordan had found himself spacing out and staring at the teeny little patch of ankle showing between the top of john’s black sock and where the hem of his slacks had slightly pulled up, as though he were some sort of repressed victorian nobleman scandalized at the mere sight of the inch-high strip of pale skin._ _ _

___the next piece of clearly recalled dialogue, of course, was john’s mildly reproachful “why’re you staring at my feet?” which jordan had replied to with a stunningly fast, “ankles, actually.”_ _ _

“god, you’re not into that, are you? feet, i mean. that’s a bit _too_ disgusting, i couldn’t take it. i’d have to kill you for real.” john, he remembers, had said that very strangely—not like a joke, exactly, though he clearly wasn’t being serious, but… slyly, jordan would suppose, as though john was expecting him to recognize a paradox, or a glaring piece of irony. 

“no, i’m not into _feet,_ you creep,” jordan had laughed. “it’s not like it’d matter, anyway, even if i was.” 

___“wouldn’t it?”_ _ _

___that’d been an odd question._ _ _

___another gap, here; or, well, sort of. jordan remembers talking more animatedly, john looking at him fascinatedly as he snorted with laughter at his own jokes, both of them forgetting about the glass of filth on the end table. they’d migrated to sitting on the side edges of the middle cushion, rather than the separate two on the ends of the sofa. he recalls john looking at him intensely, his gaze flicking up and down, up and down, as though he’d been searching for something, though jordan hadn’t known what._ _ _

he remembers being kissed. john’s mouth had been just as much the pleasant sort of overly hot as the rest of him, and he remembers _doing_ the kissing, too, eventually—he’d had to pull john down by the tie to get his mouth on him, but he’d managed, crushing their lips together again and again, john’s teeth and tongue the hot coals that he suddenly had seemed to need like oxygen and desperately wanted against every inch of him, overwhelmed with the desire for the fire under john’s skin to ravage his own. he remembers being touched, as well, in a disorientingly gentle manner that he hadn’t been expecting, fingers pressing to his jaw, his chin, his chest, avoiding his throat, undoing the top buttons of his shirt to expose his collarbones. 

he remembers standing up from the sofa and john backing him up to the wall, those weird shiny eyes heavy-lidded, before placing his too-warm hands on jordan’s waist and _lifting_ , a good six inches so that john could look him in the eye, seemingly with no effort at all despite his skinny frame. considering the previous events of the day (which had, of course, consisted of him being held up by john in a decidedly _un-sexy_ manner), that should not have been as attractive as jordan had apparently thought it was, but his face had gone red and his head had tilted forwards and he’d made an _extremely_ embarrassing noise anyway. (he hadn’t even bothered squirming to be released, this time, but rather had simply placed his forearms on john’s shoulders, grateful for the increased ease in kissing him the change in position had provided.) 

he remembers being held against a doorframe somewhere else in his flat, john’s iron grip pinning his wrists above his head with a knee pressed between his legs, a low mumbled string of _yeah yeah yeah_ s falling from his own mouth and john muttering something that jordan can’t recall but _knows_ made his breath stutter and his fingers twitch and his stomach turn to molten lava. 

(“sorry for trying to strangle you,” john had said, voice low enough to make jordan’s skin vibrate where john’s mouth was pressed against his jaw, fever-warm fingers trailing down his stomach. 

“sorry i lit you on fire,” jordan had replied, the last word turning suddenly into a shuddering exhale as john’s hands found their mark. 

“you’re hot,” john’s voice came a moment later, the bluntness of the compliment driving a flush to jordan’s face. 

“wow.” 

“‘m serious,” john continued, hands moving up jordan’s sides to rest on his shoulders and pull him closer. “ _scalding_ , you are. you’re gonna burn me up again.” 

___“should i be thanking you, or—“_ _ _

“oh, don’t worry, it’s _very_ sexy.”) 

somewhere between being sweet-talked and being screwed into the mattress he’d had the (somewhat late) realization that john was, in fact, almost definitely _not_ a human being, but jordan hadn’t particularly cared. he likes to think of himself as generally open-minded. 

___(he’d woken alone, with pneumonia and a headsplitting hangover, and three bite marks on his collarbone that had ended up getting infected. disconcertingly, he’d still found himself wishing that john had left a phone number._ _ _

___god, he’s fucking insane._ _ _

___he’d burnt the bedsheets.)_ _ _

* * *

___“hello,” he’s saying, shaky, into his cell phone, “hello, can you hear me?”_ _ _

_yes, sir, what’s your emergency?_

___“i’m—there’s a fire, an apartment building on fire,” trying not to drop the phone from his tractionless gloves, pulling them off to unhelpfully expose hands slick with nervous sweat._ _ _

_what is your address?_

___“ninety-seven—ah—ninety-seven prospero road, um—in archway—“_ _ _

_alright, sir, emergency responders are on their way. please remain calm._

“yeah, it’s—yeah.” he’s staring at the fire, standing in front of his van, so close to the front of it that the backs of his knees are knocking on the bumper, and it’s still so _hot_ —it feels like staring into a lit furnace, and his eyes are starting to tear up from the smoke—but he can’t pull his gaze away from the flames, watching them lick up the sides of the building like draconian tongues, flickering and roaring and lighting up the chilly night. 

___he hears the sirens, probably—the sound goes into his ears, but doesn’t ever actually register. he only realizes at all that he’s no longer alone when a member of the fire brigade asks him what had happened. only then can he tear himself from watching jane prentiss’ apartment building burn._ _ _

* * *

___he’s restless, and his dreams grow odder, over time—and when he doesn’t dream of john, he dreams of jane. a wide, staring gaze through dark lashes and darker hair, the feeling of a hundred thousand phantom ants across his skin an eerie shadow of how he imagines the feeling of the worms that tear voraciously through her flesh._ _ _

sometimes she lies passively, sprawled with a strange sort of artful grace upon the tiled floor of the magnus institute, the only difference between the dream and past reality the fact that she is still breathing and still blinking and her pale skin is still shifting, alive with her strange progeny—sometimes she sits up, her too-large dress draped over her knees and her skinny barefooted legs swinging off the edge of the table she’s on in a bizarrely human way, watching him watching her somehow without a mite of the archivist’s persistent scrutiny—sometimes she is in his arms, a position that shows off how very small she truly is, her hair falling over him in a tangled curtain as the worms in her forearms and palms wriggle about against his shoulders (graciously refraining from burrowing in), her lips against his ear as she sings, high and clear and pretty, that he could do so much, could _be_ so much, could be _everything,_ could be held and kissed and consumed and _loved,_ loved so _much,_ so deeply and intensely and _painfully,_ by her, and by john, and by _everything_ that needed him, everything that saw _him_ as their _home,_ until the singing becomes a mournful wail and she’s slamming her little fists against his chest over and over and telling him not to trade his flesh for wax, not to give himself to that ever-burning bonfire crackling inside the pit of his stomach, shrieking that the destruction cannot love, cannot love _him,_ can _never_ love him like the _hive_ loves him, has _always_ loved him and _will_ always love him—and sometimes he is on the ground, the incinerator roaring somewhere out of sight, and she is standing silently over him, face a mask of pockmarked holes and moving things, looming and shadowed but making no move towards him, seemingly content to simply revel in his squirming terror. 

___(sometimes he is the one inside the incinerator._ _ _

___he does not know who turns it on—the archivist, maybe? jane? or does he turn it on himself?—but it always grinds itself to life, coughing and rumbling ominously, readying itself to turn him into ash._ _ _

___he loves it. the sensation of being burnt alive isn’t one he’s acquainted with in his waking life, but its dream equivalent is almost exactly how he imagines it, and he quickly becomes enthralled._ _ _

the feeling, of course, is _sensational._ his nerve endings always take a little while to catch up to the sudden rush of heat, but when they do, the pain is the most exquisite he has ever felt—like pressing his entire body to ten hundred thousand searing stovetops, like bathing in boiling quicksilver and hydrochloric acid and volcanic magma, like being skinned alive and then drowned in rock salt and lime juice and triple sec—destructive and all-consuming and absolutely viciously _wonderful._

___the metal around him glows the dull red of far-off stars and then the attractive orange of his van’s hazard lights and then the shining yellow of precious gold, phosphorus and fluorine and magnesium fire, and he melts into oil and soot and candle wax as he throws his head back in ecstasy, gleefully allowing the raging inferno to eat him alive._ _ _

about here, steeled with the conviction that this is _personal,_ that this is for _him,_ that this is something the ever-watching archivist _does not **ever** get to see,_ is usually where he jolts awake. he forces himself manually into consciousness, sitting up in bed and shaking like an aspen leaf with sweat-soaked clothes and a hard-on, his breaths fast and heavy and labored. he’s always so _warm_ , disconcertingly so, flushed and hot all over with more than the inexplicable arousal, more than any overworking-furnace winter stuffiness or any kept-the-window-closed summer heat, as though his entire body is straining to burst once more into beautiful, hungry flames. 

____he tries not to think about it.)_ _ _ _

* * *

____in the winter of 2015, long before he goes to the magnus institute, he meets someone on the street._ _ _ _

____it’s chance, or so he thinks at the time—he’s walking quickly down an alleyway with his hands in his pockets and his headphones in, and she slams into his tense shoulder at mach speed as she hurries in the opposite direction._ _ _ _

“oh, sorry,” he says, pulling one earbud out and turning back before pausing and blinking at her, confused, as she’s standing there in nothing but sockless sneakers, a black tank top, and workout shorts as the december snow flurries around her, staring not at _him,_ but at the arm she’d knocked against (the left one) in utter astonishment. 

“you’re _okay,_ ” she says, almost to herself. 

“can i help you,” he asks, a bit put out by this strange woman who seems not to have a single snowflake in her dark, chin-length hair—and then she steps closer, and he _looks_ closer, and then he sees that the reason she’s high and dry is because the falling snow is _melting_ as soon as it drifts within a few inches of her. he takes a cautious pace back and away from her. 

“no-no-no, i can _not_ lose you. hold on,” says the woman in a laughing voice, and reaches out to take his arm. he lets her, against his better judgement and despite that concerning comment, but all she does is drag him into an empty doorway, out of the whirling snow and out of the way of any passerby in the alley. she lets him go, blackish-brown eyes again locked on the bit of his arm she’d had her small, warm hand on with delight and wonder. “what—what’s your name? what do you do?” 

____he answers both questions, also against his better judgement, but something about her is sort of interesting._ _ _ _

____jude perry, leopard of lombard street (as she introduces herself in return), smiles a large gap-toothed smile and holds out her hand. jordan looks at it, with its very smooth skin and manicured, though unpainted, nails, and is very suddenly full of the understanding that if he shakes it, he will almost certainly immediately regret it. he keeps his own hands in his pockets and glares at her as she drawls,_ _ _ _

“a-ha, oh, i _knew_ it. only people in-tune with _that_ are the real ones.” 

_huh?_

“yeah, yeah, you _stink,_ ” she says, anticipatorily gleeful, leaning slightly closer and somehow looming despite her unimpressive height, before he can inquire as to what she meant by _real ones_. “i knew it from the _second_ i got close to you.” what’s going on? who is this woman? his mind flicks back to what john had said to him on the porch of the house full of ants, all those years ago. _more fire and brimstone? should have known, really, you reek of it._

“care to elaborate?” he asks jude, sounding slightly less nervous than he feels, and she laughs. it’s kind of a mean sound, though she hadn’t actually _said_ anything particularly nasty, and it makes her short, unevenly cut curtain of hair swish about her round face, and as it tails off the sound is quickly lost to the wind that’s quickly picking up around them. 

“you _stink_ , bug boy! all of us do! it’s a great honor, really.” yeah, this clears up nothing. he crosses his arms, lifting one eyebrow—the left one, a trick he’d practiced for weeks back when he was sixteen or seventeen—and stares her down. she’s really quite short and he has a good seven or eight inches on her, so it’s not that hard, but the way she rolls her eyes before continuing gives him the impression that she’s caving more because she _wants_ to talk to him than because he’s intimidating her into it. 

“you just—oh, i dunno. you have a _smell_ to you. they’re all different, _we’re_ all different, but, like—okay.” 

she takes a breath. “when you’re different, when you’re different the way _we’re_ different, you just—you know, after a while, when someone’s like you, yeah? it’s like that.” 

she studies him for a moment, taking in his uncomprehending expression. “don’t tell me you don’t _feel_ it. the fire under your skin. _i_ can feel it, even from here. dunno why you bother with the coat, really.” he _is_ growing uncomfortably warm. he unzips his jacket, letting a rush of cold air in. as she watches him do so, her own expression has become full of something—he wouldn’t call it _compassion_ , he’s starting to doubt this woman is even capable of that, but perhaps it’s understanding. 

____“you’re burning yourself to ash, mister kennedy—and soon there’ll be nothing left of you. take it from me.” her voice is quiet, serious, hardly audible over the storm._ _ _ _

____jordan feels like he should be more nervous than he is. he barely registers taking his jacket off entirely, not even feeling the wind this time, as a sudden wave of heat washes over him from the toes up that he knows jude can't be responsible for. he isn’t sweating, though. he wonders if he’s maybe having a heart attack. he’s barely thirty-two, is that old enough for one?_ _ _ _

____jude smiles—less of a predatory grin, this time, and more of a simple turning-up of the mouth in recognition._ _ _ _

____she reaches out to him. “don’t you want an outlet?”_ _ _ _

as her fingers draw close, jordan can _tell_ how hot her skin is, can _see_ it warp the air around it into mirages—and before he can jerk it back, she presses her little hand to his now-bare forearm. 

____he almost yells out of reflex, but reigns himself in—because it isn’t hot._ _ _ _

or, well, it _is_ , but in a very detached way. academically, of course, he _knows_ it’s hot, he can _see_ how hot it is, and he’s accidentally laid his palms on enough stovetops and had enough disturbingly realistic dreams to know how it _should_ be feeling—a little delay, while the nerves catch up, and then an iron brand of scorching pain—but the heat, the sizzle of searing flesh, it doesn’t come. jude removes her hand, and he can see that the skin below where it had rested isn’t even reddened. the hair on his arm hasn’t even begun to smolder. 

____jude grins as though this proves something, her gaze flicking from jordan’s arm to his eyes, back and forth._ _ _ _

____“and i smell like—what, exactly?” it’s all he can think to say, and he’s honestly curious. jude takes a large, facetious sniff and then taps her chin in mock thought, scrutinizing him for a moment, before gaily replying, “nitroglycerin!”_ _ _ _

____she sniffs again, squinting in disgust. “and… raid.”_ _ _ _

an unpleasant combination. jordan wrinkles his nose reflexively, despite the distinct _lack_ of any odor, and jude laughs her sharp laugh again. he wants to interject at the persistent insistence that he’s apparently a member of the same elite club as this strange woman, but as if predicting his response, she raises a hand to stop him, and he again falls silent. 

____“look, i’m not going to explain it to you if you don’t already know. but i can definitely take you to some people who will.” that’s a precariously volatile situation if jordan has ever heard one, one he decides to defuse right away._ _ _ _

____“i’m not meeting up with your crazy friends, thank you very much.”_ _ _ _

____(is she right, though? is there something different about him? has he always liked his food so spicy? has he always smoked so much? has he always taken such hot showers? has this jacket always smelled like gasoline?)_ _ _ _

____jude shrugs, and smiles again, and steps away from him, back into the alleyway and what, as they talked, has slowly become a blizzard. “well, i’m not going to make you. but keep it in mind. don’t call me, i’ll call you.” and with that, she’s gone into the storm._ _ _ _

____jordan walks out after her, and then he stands there, in the middle of the empty alleyway, for a very long time._ _ _ _

____he looks on either shoulder, sweeps a hand through his hair, and knows that all the snow that should be collecting there has long since turned to steam._ _ _ _

(he goes home, then, mostly on autopilot, before proceeding to immediately have a panic attack in front of his bathroom mirror. he tries to force himself to calm down, breathing in, breathing out, the sharp smell of coal and kerosene and chimney ash pervading every sense, shakily striking a match and holding the flame to the tip of his tongue like that scene in _jennifer’s body_ and gripping the edge of the sink with his free hand so hard his knuckles turn white when he _can’t feel it._ ) 

* * *

____strange things happen, as they always have, as they always will._ _ _ _

____he hardly notices when he stops extinguishing cigarettes on an ashtray and starts putting them out on his bare skin—palms, wrists, arms, cheeks, tongue—he’s stopped feeling it a long time ago, and does it mostly for the satisfying sizzling sound he always gets. the marks never last very long._ _ _ _

he burns down a building. two buildings, four, seven, ten. he loses track. he does it the way he’s seen it on an episode of _forensic files_ , lights a cigarette and ties it to a pair of matches with a rubber band and wraps it up in notebook paper, sets it in a bin of flammable-looking paper folders at an office supply store and walks outside to sit in his van in the parking lot and wait. the place goes up faster than he sort of thought it would—he’s watching smoke curl from the windows within ten minutes. 

____there’d been four other people inside, when he’d left. he doesn’t see anyone come out. it makes him uneasy that the fact excites him._ _ _ _

on the news that night, he watches, intently, what he’s done. watches the reporter’s footage, watches the flames eat at the drywall, turning plastic into steam and paper into ash. he can’t _stop_ watching. 

four people dead. they don’t suspect arson. _an electrical malfunction,_ they’d said. _a tragedy_. something wrong with those big long fluorescent department store lights. it’s not unbelievable, but it’s not the truth. 

the strangest thing, though, they’d noticed, something that makes him squirm, watching it on the television, was that the damage done didn’t _match_ an electrical fire. the warped metal and liquefied plastic—the amount of soot and smoke—the fact that those that had died had been almost unrecognizable from the near-cremation—did electrical fires usually get so hot? 

____(he’s uncomfortable with the idea of people dying. but the rush he’d felt, from the choking fear of those four people with so much to live for, had almost made it worth it._ _ _ _

____electrical fires don’t get that hot._ _ _ _

____he feels sick._ _ _ _

____is it worse to be remorseful and continue anyway, or not to feel any guilt at all?_ _ _ _

____he couldn’t tell you.)_ _ _ _

____he wonders, not for the first time, if he’s going insane. he used to light matches, you know, hold them carefully and watch them burn down the sticks before dipping them in water glasses right before the fire reached his fingertips. he still does it, now—forgoing the water entirely, letting the burning phosphorus heat his skin past where the point of pain once was, but is no longer, and hasn’t been for months._ _ _ _

he’s _itchy,_ too, his skin constantly crawling with the feeling of all those ants—he scratches the skin on his arms raw and pours alcohol over them until they sting, trying to _burn_ the scuttling, the filth, the _corruption_ off of him. it doesn’t work. 

____a girl comes home with him at night in the spring, even though he reeks of gasoline and his kisses give her heat blisters, and she leaves with singed hair on her arms and legs and patches of burn-rosy skin on the inside of her thighs and a pervading sense of prickly-hot unease._ _ _ _

____she makes a statement to the magnus institute, later, about the man she’d met at a nightclub whose skin had felt like molten metal. the archivist reads it and wishes he had known more, before, than he did—wishes that he might have realized. might have done something. might have stopped another monster from emerging when he had the chance._ _ _ _

____(it wouldn’t have mattered, though. devastation always catches up to those it follows—and always, eventually, wins over those it courts.)_ _ _ _

he isn’t sleeping much, anymore—if he ever really had. he honestly can’t remember. he’s never sure when dream fades to reality melts into dream becomes reality. he stands in front of the bathroom mirror (and he looks _terrible,_ skin overly pale, with dark circles that look like he’d applied makeup to the wrong side of his eyes and greasy hair that’s overdue for a trim), sticks out his tongue and watches a string of saliva drip-drip-drip down from the tip of it into the sink and he reaches down into the basin (how long had he stood there, watching, with his eyes unfocused and his mouth open?) and touches the porcelain, and when he holds his fingers up to his face to inspect them, they’re wet—not with spit, but with melted wax. _how original._

he no longer sees the archivist, on the rare events he is sure that he is asleep, and while the non-presence of a voyeur (because that _is_ what the archivist is, now, always an unwelcome watcher, but is it not suddenly so very _personal?_ is it not slightly more of a _pry_ to spy upon his dreaming? because he no longer dreams of the stories he told the archivist two years ago) relieves him of some terror that has long been dulled by overexposure, sometimes the real fear lies in the absence. there is nobody to see what happens to him, now. would the archivist even care? 

hot hands touch his face, card through his hair, tap along his shoulders when his eyes are closed. he’s sure that, at some point, a woman visits him, tall with freckles and bright green eyes and beautiful auburn hair, and tells him that everything will be alright, that he could be _free_ of his _disgust_ again, if he would just…take control. take _responsibility,_ jordan kennedy, for what you _are,_ for what you’ve _done._

____he decides that he believes her. she tells him what to do._ _ _ _

(the archivist would care. the archivist cares about everyone, which makes the eye-that-watches furious—if it, in any sense, can feel anger. the archivist isn’t actually sure if it can. at this point, the alleged-or-not sentience of gods is one of the only things about which the archivist does _not_ know. 

____the archivist would watch, of course, for there is nothing else to do. the archivist would watch a becoming—he finds it, of course, above all, fascinating—and will concede to a change in position, if only for the purpose of collecting information._ _ _ _

____there is nothing else to do._ _ _ _

_before him rises an incinerator door, the glowing light of the flames curling around the cracks. with a wailing shriek, the door opens, and the burning silhouette that stands within is ingrained upon the archivist’s racing mind._ oh, it’s the exterminator. 

he _shoves_ the door open, eyes wild and alight, sizzling candle-skin already at a rolling boil. smoke curls from both his mouth and his hand, where the latter is pressed against the scorching metal of the incinerator’s interior door. he meets, somehow, all of the archivist’s eyes, and though he does not speak, the fire in his gaze is crystal clear. 

the exterminator laughs at the archivist, mocking and taunting, dauntless as the incinerator’s flames crackle around his feet—all his fear evaporated, siphoned away to fuel his own ever-growing lightless flame. 

and the archivist—for once, for often, for always—is _terrified._ ) 

* * *

____he makes his decision on the hottest day of the summer, and two weeks later, he finds himself meeting up with jude perry’s crazy friends._ _ _ _

they’re not _actually_ that bad, all things considered—a rowdy bunch, sure, but very funny in a sideways sort of way and a good deal friendlier than some other pals-of-acquaintances he’s met in his lifetime, all with a _lot_ of money to burn. he knows they’re like jude, though. all of them are. they talk and laugh and tell him jokes and light his cigarettes with the tips of their fingers but yeah, he sees it. sees the flames in their eyes, sees the odd melty-shine of their skin, sees the wicked grins on their faces at some of the more off-color jabs. 

he gets the feeling that they sort of _want_ him to see it. like they’re trying to—entice him, somehow, give him some sort of incentive, though for _what_ he doesn’t think he’s absolutely sure. 

____(this is a lie. he knows what they want him to do. he does not tell them that he knows. he does not tell them that he has already bought the bottle of lighter fluid, either, or that it is, in fact, the thing currently in the pocket of his jacket that he keeps nervously tapping his fingers on during lulls in the conversation.)_ _ _ _

* * *

they are _elated,_ when he tells them. they grin their waxy smiles and kiss him burning-hot on both his cheeks, little luck-presents, and tell him that they are _so excited to be here with him, so happy to witness the test of his faith, so honored to be present at his renewal._

____it goes a way to make him feel better—and he isn’t sure if that’s a good thing. he supposes, eventually, that it must be, and so he is appropriately relieved._ _ _ _

he wonders if he truly feels the way he does, or if the thing, the presence, the can-only-be-a- _god_ that he has inexplicably caught the notice of is feeling things, and he is simply its conduit. he wonders if it would be more of a comfort to know that what he feels is unbidden, that something else is manipulating his heart, or to know that the sickeningly pleasant waves of appreciation, of vitality, of _love_ that surge through him as soon as he smells smoke are all his own. 

it doesn’t matter, in the end, he supposes, because they stand attentively to watch him anyway—were all these sort of not-quite-suicides so _public?_ or is he actually being _judged?_

he does what he knows, inexplicably, he is supposed to. he uncaps the lighter fluid, pours it over his arms—right and then left—soaking his shirt, and then over his legs—left and then right—all the way until it drips into his shoes, and then upends the last of it over his head, feeling the cold liquid splash down into his hair and begin to run in rivulets down the sides of his face, gritting his teeth to keep his mouth shut and screwing up his eyes so not a drop gets in. he takes a breath, a deep one, when the bottle is finally empty. it smells like the inside of his apartment. 

jude lights a match. he doesn’t know why, but they chose _her_ to oversee everything tonight. she strikes it on the cardboard box like she’s about to light a goddamn scented candle and holds it out to him imperiously, her face illuminated only by the teeny flame. he reaches out and _grabs_ the thing, the smoldering tip of it pressing into his palm, and throws it to his feet—the puddle of lighter fluid catches instantly, followed immediately by his butane-soaked sneakers and then by the hem of his trousers. 

he thinks about seven years ago, standing in front of a house in bromley with a cigarette lighter. he thinks about four years ago, watching jane prentiss’ apartment building go up in sparks. 

he sees the satisfaction in jude’s eyes, sees the crooked smile on her round face through the acrid smoke and the haze of delicious agony, and he knows, when the hungry fire begins to lick up around his knees, that he has made the right decision. 

he grins back at her, tears of pain rolling halfway down his face before evaporating, and she shouts something in glee—but he doesn’t hear her voice. all he hears, besides the crackle-popping hiss of the plastic in his shoes liquefying, is the triumphant roaring in his head of desolation’s glorious inferno. 

and ardently, beautifully, _brilliantly_ does he burn. 

(he can feel the filth evaporating off his skin as it sizzles, he can feel whatever disgusting crawling _thing_ it is that’d laid its claim to him shrieking in loss as he escapes it in a literal puff of smoke, and he’s _clean_ again, once and for all. his only word, when the wonderful scorching heat devours him, is a relieved, reverent _finally._ ) 

* * *

jude takes him drinking a few days later, once he gets used to the _wax_ thing. something about random parts of his body melting on him at the slightest emotional provocation didn’t seem to lend itself well to social outings for _some_ reason, but he got a handle on it fairly quickly, all things considered, and she’d taken the opportunity to talk to him about the world he’s now a part of. 

_____“are they enemies?”_ _ _ _ _

“eh, the thing is that it honestly depends,” lilts jude, taking another swig of her drink. he’s not sure what it actually is she’s drinking, something honey-colored and caustic-smelling, but jordan doesn’t ask. he doesn’t have particularly strong opinions on alcohol—rather, he has strong opinions on _jude’s_ opinions on alcohol, but can’t be bothered at the moment to start an argument. 

“relationships between avatars and entities keep building up and breaking down based on the century. depending on who’s sleeping with who, who’s mad at who, and who thinks who is a complete loser, each ritual could be pushed forward or back by hundreds of years. it’s like, i dunno, the fucking _clique,_ or something, but instead of rich american sixth year girls it’s a bunch of immortal freaks working for gods that live off our fear.” 

_____“so, what, they all hate each other, just pretend not to?”_ _ _ _ _

“see, it’s not even _that,_ ” jude replies. “half of them _don’t_ hate each other. the people’s church and the fairchilds have been in cahoots for years. _our_ lot gets on with the circus, but the clowns can’t work with the watchers, even though we can. the filth freaks’ll work with whatever gets them dirtiest, but they don’t like us much, and none of ‘em can stand that yellow-door asshole, whatever he’s calling itself nowadays. it’s all delicate,” she finishes, lighting a cigarette by pressing the flat of her thumb against the end until it begins to sizzle. jordan copies her, after a moment, though it takes him a try or two, and she nods at him in respect as he takes a drag. 

_____“yellow-door asshole?”_ _ _ _ _

“urgh, do not even get me _started,_ ” jude spits, “one of those spiral freaks—dunno _what_ the creep does in its spare time, but he thinks it’s real funny to drop that door down when i wanna get in the closet or something and trick me into gettin’ all turned around. just _me,_ too. bet it’s fuckin’ listening right now, hey, _michael!_ ” she turns around to face the rest of the bar and shouts that last bit—jordan peeks to see if anyone or anything responds, but aside from a tall man with long blonde hair in a curly ponytail leaning against the support beam, who looks up and blinks in mild recognition for a split-second before returning his gaze to wherever it had been, no one present even spares a glance. 

_____“goddamn whack-job,” mutters jude, turning back around. privately, jordan doesn’t think either of them have any room to talk about being a whack-job, spiral avatar be damned, but he doesn’t say that._ _ _ _ _

_____what he says instead is, “so, gonna give me the full run-down?”_ _ _ _ _

jude physically startles in her chair, dark eyes widening comically, before she slams down her glass in emphasis and says, “for fuck’s sake, kennedy, why’d you let me get _this_ far?” 

_____she launches into her actual explanation with gusto he hadn’t expected. he wonders if he should be taking notes. he doesn’t, but only because he’s left the only notebook he has that hasn’t been used as kindling back in the glovebox of his van._ _ _ _ _

jude cycles through entities with no obvious pattern, explaining them as thoroughly as she cares to (which sometimes isn’t very much) with each go; viscera, forsaken, choke, falling titan, terminus. she nods in what might even be sympathy when his jaw tightens and his eyes grow hard as she describes the crawling rot, and she forgets the names of some of them (“clowns, clowns—the, uh, the strangle?”), which is pretty funny. when she reaches the last entity, though, the fourteenth, her voice gets quiet. 

“the desolation,” she begins. “the blackened earth. the reckoning, the relentless rushing tide of destruction and pain.” she keeps speaking, as if she’s rehearsed it, her voice rising in pitch until jordan is almost under the impression he’s watching her perform on stage. “ _the destructive, agonising heat of burning flesh and land scoured of life. the light, the comfort of fire stripped from it, leaving nothing but the terror of its approach._ ” her flickering-candle eyes slide up to his, and she grabs his hand like she’s trying to convince him of something. 

“ _the lightless flame,_ ” she intones, her hand rapidly heating up against his own perpetually-scorching flesh. 

jordan has never felt any particular connection to god. his parents were moderately religious, but he never could be, because—well, first of all, he liked boys, but more broadly, he couldn’t reconcile the idea that god could watch over everything with the idea that god would care about _him_. he _did_ use to pray, sometimes—but he never got the feeling that god was ever listening. _could_ ever be listening. surely someone so busy would have no time to hear the woes of one boy—so, eventually, he stopped talking. he kept the idea in the back of his mind, and didn’t expect the feeling of being unnoticed to abate. 

__

__

and now, here, in this bar he doesn’t remember the name of, with jude perry grinning like a madwoman and squeezing his hand in her own similarly-searing one, he knows how he _should_ have always felt. the fire that he feeds and that feeds him in return has always been too big to be less than divine but the crackling flame in his stomach grows to a sudden roar as he… _realizes._

god is not a man with a beard in a flowing robe. god is not a woman, either (though maybe it used to speak through one)—god is not a person. you cannot reach out and touch god with your mortal fingers, for god would torch you and your fingers to screaming ash before you could even get close. god is bigger, brighter, _more_ than anything in the simplest term, and fuels those which fuel it, feeds those who it is fed by. god will char the earth and boil the seas and ignite the atmosphere’s very oxygen and jordan will be part of that. him, jordan kennedy, _he_ will help reduce the world to cinders. god has decreed it, so it is. god notices all, and god loves the worthy. 

jordan knows this, in this exact second—knows that god _sees_ him, _knows_ him, _loves_ him, has _deemed him worthy_ —and he thinks he might be tearing up, or maybe he would be if they didn’t evaporate as soon as they touch his cheeks. jude must know that he knows, must see it in his expression, because her smile gets just a little bit wider and she stage-whispers, “ _now_ you’ve got it.” 

_____(when they leave, the spot where jordan’s arm had been resting on the wooden bar will be scorched to black. he will not notice it, but jude will, and she will smile in triumph and in pride when she does.)_ _ _ _ _

“i know it’s not your job to explain it all, or anything, but, you know,” jordan says later, staring at the cigarette in his hand, the blackening where his fingers touch the paper. he smells the smoke, feels it fill his lungs—there is no burn anymore. it feels just like breathing oxygen. he wonders if he still _needs_ to breathe at all, now, or if it’s just a reflex. “you seem like you got a pretty good handle on all of this stuff.” 

“i’ll tell you one thing, bug boy, the bar’s underground,” says jude, voice flat and eyes half-lidded. she swallows the last of her drink and thunks the empty glass onto the bar. “buy another round, would you?” jordan rolls his eyes, maybe only a little bit fondly, and fishes around in his pocket for his credit card. 

* * *

the world ends in the autumn of 2018, because of course it does. 

it’s not a surprise, for jordan. he didn’t know it would be like _this,_ of course, but he supposes that humanity’s had their fast track to Extinction a long time coming, and the autumn of 2018 is as good a time as any. 

no, the surprise comes with the fact that there’s been a space carved out for him in the landscape of endless fear. 

it’s nothing special. it’s not melanie king’s battlefield full of tinkling music boxes, it’s not karolina górka’s slowly collapsing underground line, it’s not naomi herne’s foggy hundred-acre graveyard. but it’s _his,_ which is more than he’d been expecting. 

(he isn’t sure _what_ he’d been expecting.) 

it’s a botanical garden, he thinks, or it used to be, or maybe it never was at all—time is confusing, now, even for those who actually cultivate the fear. it’s about a mile square and has a large unclimbable wall around it—stone, rough-hewn and sharp, resistant to the heat. 

and oh, it is hot. every flower in the space, every leaf and twig, every insect that dares to try to pollinate ( _especially_ the insects), the very grass that _carpets_ it is forever alight with crackling flame, every inch of the walled-in garden simmering with choking ash and wild heat. the sizzle of boiling tree sap and unlucky honeybees flash-fried into puffs of soot are music to his ears. 

the garden’s visitors, a small handful of middle-aged men and women, do not know that the garden has never _not_ been on fire. they are under the impression that it has begun to burn quite recently, in fact, and are only just now noticing the fact that the garden's cinderblock wall has no exit. that they have been trapped, and left to go up in smoke. 

they are terrified. of it. of _him._ it’s magnificent. 

and so there he sits, beneath the gaze of the ceaseless watcher, feeling other people’s fear roll through his veins like oil, catching every nerve alight along its path, and he decides that he has never truly wanted it any other way. 

**Author's Note:**

> find my best friends and muses [here](http://antboyjordankennedy.tumblr.com) and [here!](http://mag-184.tumblr.com)
> 
> edit: i quoted directly from two episodes in this, and i thought i should tell you guys which! the italicized paragraph that begins with “before him rises an incinerator door” is one of elias’ lines from MAG 120, while a few italicized lines from jude in the paragraph that begins with “the desolation” are pulled from MAG 89!
> 
> edit 2: if you liked this, i implore you to check out [quantum libet](https://archiveofourown.org/works/26248162) by recryption, which i love very very much and definitely consider a partner work to this one! they're an amazing author and i absolutely recommend their work!
> 
> edit 3: [recommended listening for the latter half](https://open.spotify.com/track/1weHWDkjxhE0WD2SaQpuC6?si=JNPVQqsvQiC5oW1MZfbE6Q)
> 
> edit 4: jossed as of episode 184. thanks for reading, everyone!


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